Musings and rants of a middle school teacher out to save the world, one student at a time...

Monday, February 22, 2010

Crazy Girl and the Revolving Door

A few weeks ago Crazy Girl returned from her stint at Alternative School.

Truth be told I really never had any trouble with Crazy Girl. True, she chattered a lot but just about everyone in my Fifth Period Class From the Very Depths of Hell Itself has a talking problem. And yes, there were days when I wondered if she was on something or just crazy. But really, when it came down to bad behavior, I never had a lick of trouble. So having her back in class was no big deal. She came back, pretty much picked up where we left off, and began to get caught up on the first part of the unit we were working on.

Now when a kid comes back from Alternative School, they're set up on a 25 point behavior contract. Twenty-five points and you're out the door - expelled.

Crazy Girl did pretty good the first week. She did pretty good the second week. And then the third week she lost her mind, was rude, defiant and disrespectful to one of the lunchroom monitors, and ended up in ISS, with a 15 point write up.

And so she's in ISS, and although cell phones have to be handed over to the ISS teacher when they come in every morning (heck, they're not even allowed in our regular classrooms - they have to be locked in the locker and turned off), Crazy Girl didn't follow the rules and was caught texting her boyfriend (who's currently at home with an ankle bracelet).

Not a smart move.

So she's expelled for the remainder of the school year. Mr. Enforcer told me that Crazy Girl's mom is going to try to enroll her in local Christian school for troubled kids, which may not be a bad thing for her. I hope mom also starts considering therapy because, yes indeed, she's still cutting. And if Mom has half a brain, she'd find a way to break up this little romance between Crazy Girl and Future Felon and stop acting as a character witness for all his court dates.

What kills me is that this is a smart kid. A kid with tremendous potential, but she's so entranced with the dark side of life, with bad boys, and risky behavior that I really don't see a rosy future for her unless someone helps her get her head on straight and fast.

Amazing. Last year I had some of the most incredibly awful kids on the planet, kids I could have sworn wouldn't make it through the year without being expelled - and they never were. This year I have a kid who's not a lick of trouble (to me at least) and she's out the door. Something's wrong with this picture...

1 comment:

I often wonder what's going on inside some parents' heads. What do they want for their children? Are they only thinking about the here and now or do they have any long-term goals? Expectations? These poor students will repeat the cycle - caught up in their own drama, so they can't be proper role models or caregivers.